Of Blogs and Trolls

Geez – I return to [landlocked] Paradise Island for just a few days and patriarch’s world totally falls apart. People lost their damn minds over a flu outbreak currently affecting 0.00000003 percent of the nation’s population; Larry Krammer missed his own point in a shrill screed; a Supreme Court Justice called it quits; and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy. Okay, that last one was as predictable as the sunrise. Still, those others took me off guard.

All that aside, I recently had an e-mail exchange with HistoriAnn concerning a reoccurring troll outbreak on her space. No, I am not talking about Timothy Geithner -- This time. Rather, it's a reader who just won't take a hint -- or an explicit statement -- or an outright demand to just go away.

It got me to thinking, do trolls know that they are trolls? Maybe they actually think of themselves as a force of good rather than an unnecessary drag on humanity.

So, I devised this helpful quiz to determine whether you are a troll or not. Answer the following questions to know for sure:

1. I read blogs because:

A. I want to be exposed to wider range of viewpoints than is available through mainstream media.

B. My computer has a porn filter installed.

C. I believe that I am the only person qualified to police the internet.

2. When I encounter a blog post that I disagree with, I:

A. Simply move on and read another blog. Life is too short to worry about what other people are doing on their blogs.

B. Leave a short comment of disagreement with an explanation.

C. Leave comments suggesting that the blogger has questionable parentage. Then I click on all of that bloggers links and leave additional comments asking them all to just shut up.

3. My favorite blogs:

A. Challenge me to think in new ways.

B. Give helpful hints on knitting.

C. Are written by people against whom I have sworn a blood oath to defeat.

4. Most bloggers respond to my comments by:

A. Acknowledging them politely.

B. Linking to my own blog.

C. Deleting them.

5. After reading blogs, I feel:

A. Like I spent time more productively than reading a magazine.

B. Like I should have spent that time watching porn.

C. Like I need to seek revenge.

6. My day job is:

A. Clerical/Industrial.

B. Technical/Professional.

C. Handing out riddles before allowing people to pass over bridges.

7. The bloggers who I read most often:

A. Write about events in their daily lives.

B. Assess popular culture or news stories.

C. Have filed a restraining order against me.

8. The best way to engage in an on-line discussion is to:

A. Ask more questions of the author.

B. Offer a counter example.

C. Leave half a dozen comments on a single entry, all of which are longer than the author's original post.

9. If a blogger asks me to stop reading/commenting on their blog, I:

A. Stop reading/commenting on their blog.

B. Apologize for offending them and then stop reading/commenting on their blog.

C. Develop a new alias to trick them so that I can keep commenting on their blog. After all, they clearly need my help to show them the errors of their ways.

10. If I find a blogger who has made a mistake on their blog, I:

A. Send them a private e-mail noting the error.

B. Leave a short comment.

C. Phone their employer and ask that they be fired.

11. To my mind, the least interesting blogs are:

A. Not updated often.

B. Depend upon gimmicks, like campy comic book covers.

C. Are written by people with whom I actually agree.

12. Before leaving an accusatory comment, I:

A. Re-read the entry to make sure that I understand the tone and reasoning behind the post.

B. Read some of the blog archive to get a sense of that blogger’s overall politics and purpose.

C. Don’t bother reading the entry or anything else on the blog – I just know when a blogger is wrong.

13. When I read a blog written by somebody who identifies as a different race/gender/sexual orientation as myself, I:

A. Take it as an opportunity to expand my own understanding of different experiences.

B. Consider points of common humanity.

C. Assume that their blog is part of a vast conspiracy intended to rob my race/gender/sexual orientation of our basic rights.

14. In real life, my friends:

A. Don’t know that I read blogs.

B. Occasionally receive e-mails from me recommending particular blogs or entries.

C. Don’t exist outside the confines of my imagination.

15. The last time I spent a night on the town, I:

A. Went for cocktails at my favorite bar.

B. Saw a musical/play/movie.

C. Replaced a newborn infant with a changeling.

16. If another commentator disagrees with me on a third-party’s blog, I:

A. Allow the conversation to continue on its own. I said what I needed to say the first time.

B. Leave it to the blog author to respond, or not respond, as s/he sees fit.

C. Depend upon sarcasm and ALL CAPS to silence and intimidate my critics.

17. If a blogger makes reference to an event or issue that I didn’t previously know about, I:

A. Look to read more about it in my local library or from reliable internet sources.

B. Ask my friends about their knowledge of the event or issue.

C. This has never happened because I know everything about everything.

18. My own blog:

A. Is very similar in scope and content as the blogs that I read.

B. Allows me to experiment with different ideas and sharpen my writing.

C. I don’t have a blog – It would detract from all the time I need to spend “correcting” other bloggers.

19. When I have met bloggers in real life, I:

A. Have been pleasantly surprised by their approachability.

B. Exchanged helpful tips about html code.

C. Predicted that their eldest daughter would prick her finger on a spindle and die.

20. Many blogs are explicitly partisan. I think:

A. This is an important part of free speech and the exchange of ideas.

B. This has been an important transformation in political discourse over the past ten years.

C. This demands police intervention.

21. Without blogs, I would:

A. Watch more television.

B. Read more books.

C. Beat up small school children.

22. I think of blog space as:

A. The equivalent to an individual’s living room. We are all guests.

B. Akin to a coffee shop. I use the same basic manners as I use in polite society. If I wouldn't say it out loud, I won't write it.

C. A war zone where one must kill, kill, KILL.

23. Anonymity on blogs:

A. Allows individuals to be free to express their ideas without fear of reprisal.

B. Is often fragile, but should be respected.

C. Is my exclusive right. Everybody else is a coward.

24. If I were only able to leave one last comment on a blog ever again, I would:

A. Thank a particular blogger for hours of free entertainment over the years.

B. Ask why a certain blogger is disturbingly haunted by Wonder Woman.

C. Write, “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” Or words to that effect.

25. As a child, I:

A. Learned basic manners.

B. Read too many comic books.

C. Never received the attention that I felt that I deserved.

Never Get GayProf Wet or Feed Him After Midnight

I've been busy. Not busy in painful ways, but busy enough to set aside my blogging duties. I know -- The blogosphere feels so empty without me.

My mother came to visit, which required the usual ritual cleaning before hand. Then, of course, we spent several days on the road touring forgotten Midwestern cities (Have I mentioned that the rest of the U.S. should feel profound shame at their blatant disregard for this region?). We did make a stop at Chrysler -- I think that they were giving away stock as a gift with the purchase of Diet Coke. You know it's a bad sign when a company has to turn to Fiat in a hope to improve quality and management decisions.

Now I am departing for my version of Paradise Island -- Which isn't really an island at all. Actually, it's totally landlocked. But it is the source of my strange and mysterious powers.

Sure, I've some ideas for posts. But, instead, I thought that you all would like to know some new things about me:

Ten Top Trivia Tips about GayProf!

1. GayProf will often glow under UV light!
2. GayProf was originally called Cheerioats.
3. Michelangelo finished his great statue of GayProf in 1504, after eighteen months work!
4. GayProf can pollinate up to six times more efficiently than the honeybee.
5. It is bad luck to light three cigarettes with the same Gay Prof!
6. GayProf was first discovered by Alexander the Great in India, and introduced to Europe on his return!
7. If GayProf was life size, he would stand 7 ft 2 inches tall and have a neck twice the size of a human!
8. New Zealand was the first place to allow GayProf to vote.
9. A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but GayProf can not.
10. The GayProf-fighting market in the Philippines is huge - several thousand GayProf-fights take place there every day.

Make your own trivia here (HT: Acadamnit (and probably others)).

The Trouble with Geithner

Unlike others in my region, I did not mourn Rick Wagoner’s recent dismissal from GM. On the contrary, I have long believed that all of the CEO’s and boards in the auto industry needed a clean sweep. Wagoner, after all, was the genius behind the Hummer – The vehicle that came to symbolize American automakers disdain for the environment or basic common sense. It also showed the clumsiness of U.S. design. As one critic remarked, it was quite possible the only vehicle that could be larger than most standard highway lanes and yet still feel cramped inside the cabin. That takes a special type of incompetence.

Like many people, though, I also see the decision to target the auto industry as being a poor substitute for taking a hardline stance against the much more corrupt banking industries in the nation. It’s hardly a secret that the Obama administration, after embarrassing revelations that they allowed AIG to issue millions of dollars in “retention bonuses,” decided to try to look tough by kicking the dying horse that is the auto industry.

I am always confused by why Obama gives the banks a free pass while he trashes the auto industry (Who, it must be remembered, is asking for a fraction of the money as a loan that the banks are asking for as a flat-out grant). First, why would we want to retain (through bonuses, nonetheless) the banking executives who destroyed their companies? If bonuses are given because it is imagined that these executives would find a job elsewhere, I say let them try. What would they put on their resume? Somehow I think it will be hard to market yourself by including statements like, “I was a key architect for Bank of America’s financial strategies right up to its unfortunate bankruptcy.” My guess is that they couldn't even get a job at a McDonald's drive-in.

The bonuses became even more egregious when it was revealed that many of those “retentions” went to people who no longer worked for the company at all. So, we are paying to "retain" people who already quit or were fired? There is a sound business plan.

Don’t get me wrong – There is much to trash about the auto industry, too. Unlike the banks, though, at least they produce a real, tangible product at the end of the day. It might not be a product that anybody actually wants to drive, but at least you can put your hands onto it. What have the banks given us other than fees, crushing interest rates, misery, and greed?



Much of the blame for this problem falls to Obama’s obstinate refusal to dismiss his failed economic advisers, especially the creepy and crooked Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. Very few people (except me) objected to his appointment back in the day. What has become abundantly clear, though, is that GayProf was right – as usual. Geithner has no idea what he is doing; is too wiling to get into bed with banking executives; and is just, well, creepy. Even today he had to answer allegations that his office was going to sidestep Congressional imposed restrictions on CEO’s pay.

Nobody seemed to care that Geithner had zero (o) academic degrees in economics. Nor did they seem particularly concerned that he had a history of taking jobs for which he was woefully unqualified. The Financial Times reported that, when he (mysteriously) became the head of the New York Fed back in 2003, Geithner needed to bring in tutors for an hour each day to teach him the basics of macroeconomics.



I had no idea we could do that as a career strategy! Tomorrow I am going to apply for a position as the head of neurosurgery at the university hospital. Okay, so I haven’t had an anatomy class since high school; but I’m sure that I can hire some resident for an hour everyday to bring me up to speed.

Those tutors seem to have done a great job with Geithner. One can only assume that he skipped the lesson on regulation in My First Macroeconomics Workbook.

But Geithner in many ways is just a product of his mentor, the cartoonish Lawrence Summers (currently Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council). You might best remember Summers as the failed president of Harvard who once speculated that most women lacked the ability to do complex math and science. What you might not know, though, is that such sexist statements were just one whistlestop on the crazy train that has been Summers’ career.

Way back when Summers served as the chief economist of the World Bank, he advocated exporting pollution to “less developed countries” of the world. “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable,” Summers wrote in an infamous memo, “I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted.”



Yeah, where do those people in Africa get off not sharing the burden of our pollution? I mean, just because they produce minor amounts in relation to their percentage of the population doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t take their fair share of cancer and birth defects. One can imagine Obama’s distant relations in Kenya getting a surprise package from the U.S. on their doorstep. “What did cousin Obama send us?” they would ask as they tore open the gift wrap, “A box of industrial sludge?!?! Oh, man, we are not inviting him to the next family reunion.”

On Friday, the New York Times reported that Summers had received $5 million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money. Gee, no conflict of interest there.

Obama claims to enjoy reading history. He might read a bit more about other presidents who obstinately retained unpopular cabinet officials. We can think of LBJ’s tragic presidency and the retention of Robert McNamara as Defense Secretary. JFK appointed McNamara to the position despite his having no experience in defense at all (Coincidentally, he was an executive at Ford Motor Company). McNamara showed that he had no idea at all how to handle the situation in Vietnam, at first advocating a massive escalation in troops and later conceding that the war was basically a failure. In the middle, he constantly claimed near victory through a dehumanizing use of “body count” statistics. He was widely despised by the end of his tenure in 1968. Though he had a strained relationship with LBJ (who wanted an even higher body count), the President retained him despite his unpopularity.

Or we can think even more recently of little Bushie-Junior’s obstinate refusal to dismiss Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary. It was only after a resounding rejection from the U.S. public that Bush finally conceded that his administration needed pragmatic help in the form of Robert Gates rather than an ideologue like Rumsfeld.

Or, thinking again of Bushie, we can remember his staunch defense of Michael Brown, Director or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after Katrina. Does Obama really want to be remembered saying, “You’re doing a heck of a job, Geithnery”?



Obama should take heed at the huge personal costs that these presidents paid for refusing to dump the dead weight in their administrations. The public will ultimately blame the president for keeping the incompetent in office.

But Obama could also learn some valuable lessons from his most favoritist president, Abraham Lincoln. One gets the impression that Obama loves Lincoln so much that he sleeps with a picture of him under his pillow. What Obama seems to have missed, though, is that Lincoln had little problem firing people, sometimes ruthlessly. Lincoln’s first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, served less than a year in the position. When Cameron became mired in scandal, Mr. Lincoln more-or-less packed his bags for him. He also permitted Caleb Smith, his Secretary of Interior, to depart after a year in office despite their once close relationship.

Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln fired and reorganized the military structure of the Union Army numerous times until it won decisive victories. Lincoln wanted results, plain and simple. If an appointed general didn’t deliver, Lincoln showed him the door. Indeed, he even fired George McClellan despite his astounding popularity with the troops. Given that McClellan later lost the Presidency to Lincoln in 1864, it seems that the latter was vindicated in issuing a pink slip.



I appreciate that Obama decided to clean house at GM. He might, though, take a closer look back at home. That Treasury Department has a layer of dust an inch thick. Obama needs to break out the ol’ Swifter before the whole administration gets asthma.

The Passion of Mr. Gaeta

Like so many gay nerds, I devotedly watched the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Let me tell you, as a queer boy, I feel cheated. No, I am not just complaining that Apollo didn’t have another towel scene (Although . . .). Nor am I complaining about the fairly predictable ending (The Galactica crew, more or less, are the progenitors of our contemporary world who settled on earth 150,000 years ago – Gee, did they just phone it in?).

Instead, I am less-than-impressed by the show’s consistent ineptness around queer sexuality. For the record, I don’t count Baltar’s pajama-less pillow fights with the female “three” and “six” as queer. I think of that as soft-core hetero porn.

BSG apologists might stop reading now. Tune in next time at CoG when we will be discussing how to combat black mold and soap scum with grace and dignity.



For those whose first association with Battlestar Galactica still involves the soft, shiny, feathered hair of Dirk Benedict, allow me to update you. The “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica (BSG to its friends, Mr. Galactica, if you're nasty) has actually been a critical and commercial success. During its four seasons on the air, it did not fear treading into contemporary political quagmires like abortion, the Iraq war, or religious zealotry. The topic that was just too hot to handle, however, was queer sexuality (If I am really honest, BSG also had an uneven hand around questions of race, even with its racially diverse cast (including a Chicano lead!) – but that is different entry).



Way back in 2006, the gay fans asked Ron Moore, the executive producer of BSG, why such a savvy and thoughtful show totally ignored queer sex and sexuality. “It's a fair question,” he responded at the time, “I think homosexuality definitely exists in the world of Galactica, but I frankly haven't found a way to portray it yet. It's a texture that I'd like to introduce into the series without doing ‘the gay episode.’”

Yeah, because the last thing that you would want to do is create a sensationalized queer character for a one-off story line. I mean, it’s not like you would give us a maniacal lesbian incarnation of Captain Bly, would you? Surely, BSG would treat queer sexuality as part of daily life and not add a queer character just so that she could be immediately killed off by her ex-lover, right?



Oh, except that was exactly BSG’s decision. Yes, in response to gay people’s complaints that we weren’t represented in the BSG universe, they handed us the psycho-killer-lesbian-from-outer-space miniseries two years ago. In that train wreck, lesbian Admiral Cain (who unknowingly had an affair with a cylon) was the antithesis to the gruff, but kindly, hetero patriarch of the show, Commander Adama. If Adama was reasonable, Cain was psychotic. If Adama sought humanity's survival, Cain lived for revenge. If Adama balanced his military power with the civil government, Cain wanted a tyrannical dictatorship. In the end, the lesbian had to go -- Shot no less by the former cylon lover who she was torturing for information. As I recall, we were not amused.

This last season, BSG decided to up the ante by outing (Well, "sort of" outing – More on that in a minute) the long-suspected queer character Lt. Felix Gaeta. Yes, he was [sort of] out of the closet just in time for him to be executed for treason. So, when BSG did acquiesce by giving us queer characters, those characters always had to die, die, die. And who says that science fiction is hostile to queer people?

If the apologists are still reading (and, really, I implore you to stop), they are probably saying, “But, GayProf, you just don’t get it. See, it’s an alternate universe where sexuality doesn’t matter and our narrow identity labels don’t apply. The BSG crew has fluidity in their sexuality. They are beyond our hangups around sexuality.”



Nice try – If it didn’t matter in the BSG universe, then why didn’t we see men hooking up with other men week after week? Why weren’t women pilots taking time out of their busy day for a little womanly love? If sexuality was so fluid in this fictional universe, then why were none (o) of the main human characters ever in bed with somebody of the same sex?

Now, it’s true that I’ve never been trapped on a doomed space voyage for years on end; however, I imagine that sexual experimentation probably would help pass the time. Goddess knows that we saw every possible combination of hetero sex on the show.

And that brings us to the “sort of” outing of Mr. Gaeta. How do we know that Gaeta was queer? Well, you would have to have watched the special “webisodes” entitled “Face of the Enemy” for that information. Wait – Are you not part of the 1.4 percent of the viewing public who bothers watching webisodes of their favorite shows? Oh, gee, then you wouldn’t really know he was queer. For never once, not at all, did the actual televised show make any direct reference to his sexuality – Ever. In fact, “Face of the Enemy” was filmed long after production on BSG had ended – Leaving open the question about whether the cast was even aware there was a queer story line.



So, what did we learn from the webisodes? Well, Mr. Gaeta was having a relationship with the male Lt. Louis Hoshi. He also had a previous relationship with a female cylon “eight” who used information from him to execute scores of innocent humans. If one were inclined, one could suggest an argument about this representation as anti-bisexual (Though I am content to leave it as anti-queer). Gaeta, while an idealist, always ended up on the wrong side of every issue (And, let me point out again, he was shot -- for treason (Oh, and did I mention that he had already been shot once before and lost a leg? And some people say that sci-fi encourages queer bashing.))

BSG Apologist: “Aren’t you forgetting Lt. Hoshi, Gaeta’s lover? I mean, he got to be Admiral of the fleet! How do you account for that, GayProf?”



Oh, no, I haven’t forgotten Lt. Hoshi, though everybody who isn’t queer probably has. I am certain that the number one question on everybody’s mind when he was made Admiral was, “Who is that guy?” I won’t linger over the fact that he resigned the admiral position, claiming that he was much happier to be a lieutenant who took orders rather than gave them (Way to empower queer people with authority!). What I will note is that nothing on the televised show would have given the regular viewer any knowledge about Hoshi’s sexuality. In fact, did Hoshi even have more that twenty lines of dialog in the entire four seasons BSG was on the air?

I have started to think that there is a new way that purveyors of popular culture are dealing with queer discontent. Queer activists and regular gay viewers are becoming more adamant that our favorite programs acknowledge our existence. Yet, producers of sci-fi just aren’t that interested in rocking the [hetero] boat. To quote Ron Moore, this time discussing his queerless Star Trek days, “The truth is that it was not really a priority for any of us on the staff.” Hey, you can’t get more honest than that.

It isn't their priority, but they can't avoid queer demands entirely, so they have created the “open secret” approach to sexuality. Rather than include queer characters as full equals with their hetero peers, we are given side characters whose queer sexuality is only “unofficial” or known in the “expanded lore.” We can see this, for instance, in Harry Potter’s Dumbledore. The most powerful wizard in those books was only vaguely hinted at being queer when he had a deep friendship with another wizard (Who turned out to be a psychopathic killer – ahem). Yet, none of the books say anything explicitly about Dumbledore’s desires for a same-sex romantic relationship (Unlike the hetero characters, who almost all end up happily partnered). The only way we “know” Dumbledore’s sexuality is through J. K. Rowling’s later claim that she intended for him to be gay all along. Apparently it slipped her mind to include that little tidbit in the actual text.



We can see a similar pattern in ScFi’s other highly ranked show Eureka. The producers like to claim that Eureka represents a type of utopia where race, gender, and sexuality just don’t matter. For a town where such things don’t matter, apparently there is only one gay man to be found. Vincent, the town’s chef, is popularly discussed as gay, but (to my knowledge) never explicitly so in the show beyond slight hints. Certainly, he never is in a relationship. It’s just another “open secret” where his sexuality is known, but never needs to be explored on screen. And, of course, he is the most minor character in the cast. In fact, I couldn't even find a picture of him to include here. So, here is Apollo naked instead. I think it is an ad for mink coats or something:



Popular media has consented to allowing queer characters to exist, but only if their sexuality never has to be seen as equivalent to the hetero characters' relationships. If we are quiet and closeted, in other words, we are just fine. If you are a pushy queer, like that bossy Cain woman, expect the worst.

This is a pretty half-assed approach to queer liberation. Covert representations of queer characters are better than no representation at all, I suppose. The problem with such “open secrets,” though, is that they reenforce the closet more than they tear it down. To find out about these queer characters’ sexualities, one has to do more sleuthing than Angela Lansbury. Queer sexuality becomes information only for those “in the know.” Keeping that information out of the canonical representations implicitly upholds the notion that queer sexuality is something that needs to be guarded against lest that it scare the horses or offend the general public. Eve Sedgewick reminded us many years ago that closetedness is a performance “by the speech act of silence.” Well, BSG’s silence around queer Gaeta and Hoshi’s sexuality was deafening. Apparently in space, nobody hears you come out.

In what seems like a desperate bid to keep the queers watching, Ron Moore has now promised that there will be gay characters on his new show Caprica. This time he really, really means it. Maybe he does, but I'm not holding my breath.

Throughout BSG, we never saw any actual romantic intimacy between the male characters. To my mind, it’s still a sad day when television has no problem showing a robot disembowel a human or the near heterosexual rape of a young woman, but can’t stomach showing two men kiss each other out of affection.

Advice for the Newly Hired

A few nights ago I had a cocktail with a junior colleague from another department. After an hour, I couldn’t believe the yarn that ze was weaving. Sometimes junior faculty have legitimate concerns and sometimes they have an astounding sense of self entitlement. This was definitely the latter (e.g. “I should have a full year off, with pay! – I should be given classes no larger than 10 students – My salary should be higher (even though I haven’t actually produced anything yet)! – My research is clearly so much more difficult to accomplish than all of my junior peers! Why don’t they get that?”). Usually such tales of woe end with, “At my former graduate institution, they always did such and such.”

I don’t mention this to dismiss or even criticize ze’s feelings of frustration or worry. While I think some of ze’s expectations are out of touch with reality, I also recognize that they partly emerge from the stress, fear, and pressure of how ze will attain tenure while being pulled in a thousand different directions. Having to balance your own research with the demands of teaching and service work do seem insurmountable. For many, the task appears so daunting that having a year off appears the only way it will actually get done. Nobody, though, gets that year off without doing some hard work to attain it (Find a grant, young man (woman/genderqueer), find a grant).

It got me to thinking that the transition from graduate student to junior professor is often the most difficult one that people make. Few people ever discuss how hard it really is.

There are definitely good parts to that transition. Your annual income triples or even quadruples. You get genuine office space. You also can finally claim to have a real “career” rather than appearing as if you made “poor life choices.”



But there are also real struggles to that transition. As a graduate student, you are given free reign to do almost anything that you desire and have few demands placed upon you. Your adviser and/or committee members probably read things that you wrote with a critical eye and gave good feedback. You are shielded from internal squabbles between faculty members, if you are even aware that they are occurring. With the exception of the occasional TA assignment, your job has been one of luxury, simply reading and writing all day. It’s a rude awakening to find out how many other things that you will have to do as a professor. Dirty, dirty things.

I also think that most junior professors have such a hard go of it their first couple of years because it is often the first job that they have ever had, ever. Since I have been working since I was 14 or 15, this astounds me. As an undergraduate, I also worked full time or virtually full time as a secretary. So, I feel that I had a sense of what it means to be an employee in a way that many (most?) of my junior colleagues didn’t. If you have never actually worked for wages before, it can be jarring to find out that your paycheck comes with many expectations about how you spend your time. You also won’t appreciate what a sweet, sweet gig that being a professor actually is.

This is the time of year that many people are learning whether they were hired into a junior professor position. I would never hold my own career out as a model (trust me), but I’ll offer advice to all those newly employed folks anyhow.

* Publish or perish.

The oldest cliched advice is still the best. If your department/college has specified that you must have a book and two articles (or equivalent) and you don’t have them by the time your tenure clock runs out, they will deny you tenure. It might break their heart to deny you tenure because you might have been a great colleague or a fantastic teacher. Or, if you are in a hostile department, they might delight in denying you tenure. Whatever the case, if you haven’t produced the scholarship, expect the worst.

* Wear comfortable shoes.

It's just better for your legs and lower back during an active day.




* Don't confuse yourself with your dissertation adviser.

Did you study at the feet of the most renowned scholar of the ancient Olmec? Is your adviser the ultimate authority on Beatlemania? That’s fantastic! It means that we all think that you received some very solid training.

It does not mean, however, you are the most renowned scholar of the ancient Olmec. It does not meant that you are the ultimate authority on Beatlemania. Until you have the publication record, your position in the field is more speculative. Your adviser became that expert through decades of hard work. That’s work you have yet to accomplish.

* Learn to drink as if you were a cast member of Mad Men.

Drinking helps ease the stress. Or I suppose you could learn yoga instead, but, whatever. . .



* Remember that teaching is seductive.

Teaching, while rewarding, is simply easier than writing and researching. You also get more positive feedback from it. It is therefore easy to allow it to consume all of your time. Fight this urge. Figure out a way to block teaching from your mind and your schedule to get those publications out. Six years can disappear real fast.

* Don't skimp on your home surroundings.

Many of us are still in grad-student mode when we move to our new town. We therefore get a crummy, but affordable, apartment. Given, though, that most of us in the humanities do a lot of our work at home, make sure that it is a pleasant place to be. The quality of both your work and rest will vastly improve if your home is a mini-sanctuary from the daily toil.



*Be generous to your fellow junior colleagues.

All of us are in the same boat. All of us have the same stress. It therefore astounds me when I see junior colleagues going out of their way to be unnecessarily rude to other junior colleagues. If a junior colleague asks a reasonable favor (proofreading, helping out on a committee, etc), do your best to be a member of the community and a friend.

I also highly encourage you all to read each other’s work. My own research has benefited immensely from the advice and close reading of junior colleagues, even those far outside of my own field. Give your time (precious though it is) to do the same for them. Being secretive and coy about your own work will only make it weaker. Refusing to help others with their work will make you look like a selfish jerk.



If, though, I can’t appeal to you on the basis of common humanity or notions of polite society, let me remind you of this: Every junior person hired before you will advance to associate professor before you will. This means that they will vote on your tenure file, too. If you think that kissing up to the existing senior faculty can offset terrorizing your junior colleagues, you are mistaken. They will weigh whether they want to live with such an uncollegial and self-serving colleague when pondering granting you a lifetime appointment.

* Getting a job involved a lot of luck in your favor.

There were probably other candidates who were just as qualified, if not more qualified, who got passed over. Maybe people didn't read their files closely. Maybe they forgot to wear comfortable shoes. Whatever the case, good fortune smiled on you.

If you were hired with the rest of us, also assume then that we are all basically the same. We were all the stars of our individual graduate programs when we graduated. Don’t imagine that we didn’t all hear about how our work was so great and fabulous. Get over yourself.

* Manage your career for the expectations of your field, not your current university or your department.

There might be a general consensus about the requirements for tenure, but every university has its own set of rules and assumptions. Moreover, if you are in a department that praises one type of scholarship over another, they might offer advice and/or requirements that actually are out of step with where you want to be as a scholar. So, for instance, let’s say that you are hired into a department that specializes in legal history, but your work and training is all in cultural history. Chances are that the legal people are going to push your work to conform to their expectations. If, though, you never solicit advice from cultural historians outside of your department, your work will appear weak to them when it does come out. Even if you succeed at meeting local requirements, but aren’t well regarded in your field, then you will be trapped. If, on the other hand, you build a national reputation in your field and have a reputation of being a responsible colleague, you will have a secure place in your home unit.

* Think of yourself as an independent contractor.

There is no such thing as institutional loyalty. In any particular circumstance, an institution will have little trouble dismissing an employee. So, don’t imagine your career as being the same as the institution’s. If they hired you to put up drywall, satisfy the contract and put up the drywall.

Do not believe people, however, who tell you that moving jobs in academia is impossible and you must be committed to that university. This is especially true if you are in a hostile department. Is it difficult to move? Oh, yeah. If you are in a super competitive field (20th Century US History, for example), it might take several years of trying to find a new job. It is totally possible, however, to change jobs and institutions. Sometimes a move can be a really healthy thing, especially if your current work environment isn’t supportive.

* There is no “in” crowd in academia.

In the years that I have been around, I have encountered many, many academics who have felt excluded from the “in” crowd and felt like misunderstood outsiders. Yet, I have never seen an actual “in” crowd. Sure, there are cliques (some are vicious). There are also people whose scholarship receives more attention than others. In the end, though, we are all working to the same goals and find our own niches and friends. Stop searching for the “cool kids” lunch table.

* Tenure is not the end.

I have seen many newly tenured people think to themselves, "Ok, now I've made it! It's all a breeze from this point forward." Alas, the academic world doesn't work like that. Don't get me wrong. Tenure is a very nice prize indeed.



However, you still have to pay your dues and you still have to continue to work hard as an associate professor. While not a meritocracy, your status in the university will depend heavily on the number and quality of your publications. Gaining the label "trapped in rank" will start to feel mighty bad six or seven years from now.

* Never start a blog.

Seriously, it’s a bad idea.

UPDATE: Dr. Crazy has offered a fantastic alternative to this post here. My experience and advice are limited, especially in regard to SLAC's. Go read that post for important counterpoints to this post. My only quibble would be about the blog thing. What type of foolish junior professor would start a blog?

The Best Show That You Probably Don't Get on Your Cable

One of the advantages of teaching classes on U.S. popular culture is that you can order the extra-extra extended cable package with little guilt. It’s part of my job to know how race, gender, and sexuality are presented on television. When I sit on the couch with a bag of baked Snapea Crisps^©, I am not being a lazy slug and a drain on society, I am actually working. These are the noble sacrifices that I make in the pursuit of knowledge. Too bad that I didn’t become a Professor of Media Studies, then I could have justified getting HBO!

If you’re like me – and I know that you want to be –, then you think of the Logo Channel as more or a less a failed enterprise. For those who don’t know, Logo (owned by Viacom) launched in 2005 as an all GLBT-content network. It’s located way, way up on your television dial. Well, if televisions still had dials -- and if those dials went up to channel 163. You know, it’s somewhere past the All Grouting Network and before the Fear Network. Logo might not be available in all cable markets, especially those ruled by a radical Christian theocracy.

Up until now, Logo mostly recycled mediocre GL(occasionally B&T) films and produced even more mediocre original programing. They have a sketch show that just isn’t funny; a news program that tackles hard hitting topics like the music careers of porn stars; and a trying-too-hard stop-action show with a cast of generic Legos. The only bright spot was the short-lived Noah’s Arc (which deserves it’s own post at some point). Inexplicably, that was canceled while Rick & Steve lives on and on. At one point, I began to wonder if the Christian Right had funded Logo as a secret program designed to bore the gay out of us.

Recently, though, Logo stepped out of their usual dead-end programing with television genius: RuPaul’s Drag Race. Okay, we aren’t talking about Cervantes here. Still, it’s more than a little entertaining.



If you have seen any other reality competition show, then you basically know the formulaic premise behind RuPaul’s Drag Race. Probably they borrowed mostly heavily from Project Runway (so much so that one of the former contestants, Santino, is one of RuPaul’s permanent (nonvoting) judges). The contestants, in this case aspiring Drag performers, are given a short time period to complete one or two challenges each week. They then exhibit their hard work in a runway show for RuPaul and the panel of (nonvoting) judges. The two lowest ranked contestants of the week must then “lip-sync for their life” in a final performance. RuPaul, after asking the advice of the judges and her housekeeper, then decides their fates. A winner of the week is declared, while a loser must give a teary goodbye.

Like most other exploitation t.v. reality competition shows, the producers clearly hope that the time constraints and close working conditions will lead to dramatic tensions between the contestants. Like Project Runway, they have also abandoned any pretense of subtlety in their product placements. From Drag Race, we learn that serious Drag Queens only use Mac Cosmetics! And Absolut Vodka has been clinically shown to make you even gayer!

Despite copycat borrowing and corporate shilling, RuPaul’s Drag Race offers a bit more than most. First, it is probably the most racially diverse cast in any television program, reality or scripted, on the air today. The show’s nonwhite-majority cast includes African Americans, a Cameroon national, a Filipino American, and multiple Puerto Rican contestants. What other show can you think of that draws that much from the real diversity of this nation?



This isn’t to say, of course, that other scholars would agree with my rosy view of the show. There is actually a lot we could critique. In other contexts, bell hooks has been remarkably critical of representations of African-American drag queens, particularly RuPaul. While hooks acknowledges the potential for drag to subvert assumptions about gender, in her critique of Paris is Burning, she nonetheless states that “the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the ‘feminine’ that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender.” In other words, she worries that the representations of African American drag queens more often shows them to be fetishizing whiteness than longing to impersonate black women. She has also offered a stiff critique of RuPaul in particular, stating “It’s a deep thing to live in a culture where folks get off on the image of a big black man trying to look and act like a little white woman (a version of Dolly Parton’s petite retrograde femininity complete with big blond hair).”

While I might quibble about some of hooks’ assumptions, it is worth pausing to wonder why that same racial diversity that I celebrated earlier seems to only be possible on a show about Drag Queens. Race, gender, and sexuality are at play here and I have little faith that Logo’s programming managers have spent much time pondering critical theory.

Still, even though I worship at the altar of bell hooks (and I am totally onboard with her critique of the voyeuristic Paris is Burning), I can’t help but see Drag Race as offering a bit more. Of course, I also think Dolly Parton herself offers a bit more than “retrograde femininity,” but that might be why bell hooks is bell hooks and GayProf is just some obscure (though totally hot) guy with a blog.



Certainly Drag Race draws on voyeuristic impulses to see a supposedly “hidden” drag culture. The show includes pop-up definitions of terms and phrases that the drag contestants use throughout the show (e.g. “Ki Ki – When two drag queens have sex”). As mentioned, it also veers uncomfortably around questions of race, including a near miss that might have escalated into a black face performance.

Even with the producers' baiting for cattiness and the unexplored racial dynamics between the contestants, there are also unexpected messages about remembering a sense of community and maintaining your self respect. The contestants often offer each other advice, show their affection for each other, and support each other more than any other reality show that I have ever seen. RuPaul frequently reminds contestants “If you can’t love yourself, then how the hell are you going to love someone else?” Drag Queens’ reputation for sliding into Drama Queens is not shown in force here. There has been relatively little catfighting so far (I am sure to the chagrin of the producers). Moreover, I think that the drag performances can offer a challenge to assumptions about gender and race, too.

Yes, I am going to have to drag out (no pun intended) the ol’ Judith Butler (Not since Susan Sontag made her name off of “camp” has another scholar rode gay culture so hard to make themselves famous). Butler’s now famous argument is that all gender is performance and, therefore, drag performance reveals the disjunctions between anatomy, gender, and gender performance. “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself – as well as its contingency,” Butler writes, “Indeed, part of the pleasure, the giddiness of the performance is in the recognition of a radical contingency in the relation between sex and gender in the face of cultural configurations of causal unities that are regularly assumed to be natural and necessary.” Or, cutting through the academic clutter, RuPaul put it more succinctly: “You’re born naked, the rest is drag.”



For me, there is more at play with RuPaul and Drag Race than a fetish over whiteness. Instead, I see the mixing and matching of racial and gender signs as intentional play and potentially challenging (btw, this isn’t to say that I have agreed with everything RuPaul has ever said about race and gender, either). Rather than fetishizing whiteness, RuPaul merges together multiple symbols of racial and gender difference in unexpected ways that many would expect to be impossible. At the site (sight?) of that impossibility, the performer then demands acknowledgment of their unexpected beauty. Indeed, RuPaul moves between various drag personas, wearing either the blond wig and high-heels, or appearing bald and in a stiff suit and tie.

In the end, it is RuPaul who necessarily makes Drag Race something to watch. She controls all aspects of the show in true diva fashion. RuPaul (in woman drag) serves as the Heidi Klum figure who introduces the challenge; (in man drag) as the Tim Gunn figure who offers kindly advice as the contestants work on the challenge; and (in diva drag) as the only judge with an actual vote on the show. RuPaul is so much the center of the show, that her face even serves as the clock in the workroom.

Mixed between zingers and critiques, RuPaul also seems to genuinely care about all of the contestants. She sets an unusual tone for such a competition, recently reminding the divias-in-training, “You all are sisters. We are family. If one of us is in pain, we are all in pain, we are all in trouble.” Even when drag- diva RuPaul tells a losing candidate “to sashay, away,” there are words of encouragement and a reflection on the unique attributes of the parting contestant.

Like the best drag performance, Drag Race offers an entertaining spectacle that also happens to expose the artifice of all reality television. My hope is that RuPaul will “chantez and stay” to make Logo a network that we will actually want to watch.

GayProf, The Irritated

Many have asked about this phantom post. It shows that you still care!

GayProf, irritated by some local shenanigans, hastily posted before reclaiming his zen. After spending some time meditating, I remembered, “Nothing really matters.” Never blog irritated. Besides, I become so much more mysterious and interesting this way.

In place of that silly grumble, I decided that we can talk more broadly about things that irritate me. I happen to have a running list:

Creepy and crooked treasury secretaries who should never have been appointed, much less confirmed.

President Obama's willful obliviousness to the fact that the American public will never trust a word coming from his creepy and crooked treasury secretary, who should never have been appointed.

Governors who make New Mexico look bad.

A BBC commentator who confused Arizona with New Mexico a month ago.



That idiot who backed into my car in the garage with enough force to seriously dent my bumper, but drove away without leaving any note or even an apology.

Waiting at the barbershop to get my haircut.

Getting my haircut at the barbershop.

The movie Barbershop.

Ear hair.

The fact that academic events are at the mercy of the football schedule at most universities.

Dirty dishes stacked in the sink.

People who don't know that there is an obviously right way to load a dishwasher.

Corporate CEO’s who imagine that they should receive bonuses and fabulous vacations as a reward for running their companies into the ground.

The refusal of a creepy and crooked treasury secretary, who should never have been appointed, to make the termination of existing CEOs a precondition of taxpayer aid.

Republican Senators who agree to work with Democrats, but then turn out just to have intended to embarrass them.

Democrats who overestimate Republicans’ trustworthiness.

Republicans who continue to demand Reagan/Bush/Bush style economic policies that favor the wealthy despite ample evidence of the destructiveness of such policies.

People who erroneously imagine that my cat desires their attention.



People who erroneously imagine that I desire their attention.

The remarkably cheap laptop provided by BMU that crashes if I attempt to play any music or watch any video.

Knee-jerk recommendations to switch to Apple.

Claims that the movie Che provides a stunning new interpretation of the titular character when, in reality, it is just four hours of watching the revolutionary walk, pause, wheeze, and then walk some more.



The fact that U.S. movie theaters don’t serve liquor.

Lame plot devices that turn Diana Prince into a mortal simply because she isn’t wearing star-spangled panties.

Commercials for cleaning products that lead me to believe that flesh-eating bacteria is lurking on every surface in my home.

My irrational fear that two British women are randomly going to show up at my door, critique my level of cleanliness, and reveal that flesh-eating bacteria is lurking on every surface in my home.



Guests in my home who request a cocktail, but then don't drink it.

The Bee Gees.

The fact that, despite having mastered the Bewitched nose-twitch years ago, I still can’t get my couch to fly around the room.



Graduate students who don’t do their work, but nonetheless have egos so sizable that they imagine themselves as junior-junior professors.

The fact that I still mourn the loss of my Braun FlavorSelect^© Coffeemaker which died after a decade of loyal service.



My shitty Krups coffeemaker that is no replacement for the Braun FlavorSelect^©.

Peanuts contaminated with salmonella.

Job candidates who don’t do their homework before arriving on campus and, thus, ask really obvious questions that could have been answered had they taken two-minutes to consult the department webpage.

Heteronormative and consumer-driven Valentine’s Day.

Accusations that I only dislike Valentine’s Day because I am single, even if it might be true.

Wasteful construction of new buildings when architectural treasures are left abandoned and crumbling.



The nation’s airlines.

People who refer to Wonder Woman as “Superwoman.”

Bloggers who retract entries only a few hours after posting them.

I’ll leave it to you to decide my level of rationality.

Break the Code

My last post exposed some ambivalence among faculty about the role of “official” teaching evaluations from students. Most of us do want feedback on content, but there also seems to be a general consensus that the weight given to student evaluations is out of kilter with the actual hard work that goes into teaching. I also believe that most students are not well informed about the purpose of evaluations.

As many of us are seeing last semester’s teaching evaluations return to us, let me help you read between the lines of those anonymous student comments that aren’t really about your teaching at all. It’s time for one of my favorite segments at CoG, “What They Say and What They Really Mean.”

What They Say in the Written Evaluation: “This class was one of the best classes that I have ever taken.”

What They Mean: “This class was one of the best classes that I have ever taken.”

***

What They Say: “This is the worst class that I have ever taken.”

What They Mean: “This class challenged many of my most basic assumptions and required me to work hard.”

***

What They Say: “This professor was really condescending.”

What They Mean: “I can’t take criticism.”

***

What They Say: “This class required too much reading.”

What They Mean: “To pass this class, I actually had to crack a book on my own time.”

***

What They Say: "This class was so easy it was a joke."

What They Mean: "After years of reading student complaints in evaluations, this professor has simply given up."

***

What They Say: "This professor is a leading scholar in the field."

What They Mean: "This professor assigned hir own book as required reading."


***

What They Say: “This was one of the funniest professors that I have ever had.”

What They Mean: “I didn't learn a damn thing, but the professor should be given a late-night talk show.”

***

What They Say: “This professor was filled with lots and lots of energy.”

What They Mean: “I think that this professor might have a cocaine problem.”


***

What They Say: “The professor should post the lecture notes on-line so that we can have something to follow in class.”

What They Mean: “The professor should post the lecture notes on-line so that we won’t have to go to class at all.”

***

What They Say: "This professor is a fool."

What They Really Mean: "My hubris as a first-semester freshman leads me to believe that I know more than the people who spent the past twenty years studying this topic."

***

What They Say: “Discussion during class was often filled with awkward silence.”

What They Mean: “My classmates didn’t do any of the reading and therefore had nothing to say.”

***

What They Say: “The professor has the worst taste in clothes that I have ever seen.”

What They Mean: “I have no idea about what constitutes an appropriate professional relationship and will probably be fired from my first job.”

***

What They Say: “This class should have had more films.”

What They Mean: “I was often too drunk to pay attention to the lectures.”

***

What They Say: “This class had a lot of films.”

What They mean: “The professor was often too drunk to lecture.”

***

What They Say: "This class involved a lot of discussion of the cultural significance of Wonder Woman."

What They Mean: "This class was taught by GayProf."



***

What They Say: “Grading for this class was totally unfair.”

What They Mean: “I am getting a ‘F’ in this class.”

***

What They Say: “Grading for this class was totally fair.”

What They mean: “I am getting an ‘A’ in this class.”


***

What They Say: “There was too much reading about women in this class.”

What They Mean: “I think women should be chained to the stove.”

***

What They Say: “This class was so unfair. I passed the AP test in this topic and yet I still ended up with a ‘C.’”

What They Mean: “I have confused high-school competence for university-level work.”

***

What They Say: “I was really disappointed that we didn’t talk more about battlefield strategies in this history class.”

What They Mean: “I get most of my information about the past from the History Channel.”

***

What They Say: “I was really disappointed that we didn’t talk about more contemporary novels in this literature class.”

What They Mean: “I think John Grishman is the pinnacle of American literature.”

***

What They Say: “This professor was too strict.”

What They Mean: “I had fantasies about this professor spanking me.”


***

What They Say: “This professor had a political agenda.”

What They Mean: “This professor didn’t allow me to spout off about my political agenda without evidence to support my point.”

***

What They Say: “I shouldn’t have to read about gay people in a class that is required for graduation.”

What They Mean: “My religion teaches me to think of gays and lesbians as less than human.”

***

What They Say: “The attendance policy for this class treats us like we are children.”

What They Mean: “I had to cancel a two-week vacation in Paris because attendance was required for this class.”

***

What They Say: “This class would have been better if taught by an American.”

What They Mean: “I am a member of the KKK.”

***

What They Say: “The lectures were monotonous and boring.”

What They Mean: “I have confused attending university with watching television.”

***

What They Say: “This woman (or African American, or Latino/a, or Asian) professor clearly favored women (or African American, or Latino, or Asian) students.”

What They Mean: “I don’t like taking classes that aren’t taught by a white man.”

***
What They Say: “This professor didn’t care at all about students and was really detached.”

What They Mean: “This professor expected us to be adults and do our work.”

***

What They Say: “This class really stimulated my interest in this topic. I frequently went to office hours just to talk more about the material. I have now declared this topic my major.”

What They Mean: “I am secretly in love with this professor.”

***


What They Say: The professor was often late to class.

What They Mean: This professor secretly fights crime on the side.